Rating: 
Summary: Students out there...this is not the book for you!
Review: Hi was assigned a book report, and I chose this book, because of the great reviews. I found it to be very boring, and repetitive. It did not keep me interested at all! I would not reccomend it to any students... it is BY FAR the worst book that I have read
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I am an avid Margeret Atwood fan and greatly enjoyed this book. I found the characters and setting to be very vivid and I really enjoyed the ambiguous ending.
Rating:
Summary: Shoulda stayed at home girl!
Review: I enjoyed this novel on many levels. It is a great story, skilfully woven, laced with trademark Atwood satiric wit and all of the brand-name dropping you've come to expect: Drano, Holiday Inn, McDonald's, Elastoplast, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Bank of Nova Scotia, Chatelaine magazine, Ovaltine, Crest toothpaste, and not just soup, but Campbell's Chicken Noodle. I love how she does this, it seems so... Canadian!
The strength of Bodily Harm is the way Atwood delves deep into the psyche of the protagonist, the young female Toronto journalist, Rennie Wilford. Flashback portions reveal Rennie's history, connecting us to her narrow/stifled/religiously-hypocritical upbringing in backwater Griswold Ontario. It's a history she resents. Flashbacks illuminate her relationship history also. We really get to KNOW Rennie, and the more light that Atwood throws across this life, the more Rennie emerges as someone unfulfilled at her core.
And now Rennie's life is on the fritz. She is coming to terms with her partial mastectomy and the recent breakup with Jake, two problems that she imagines are directly related to each other. She becomes obsessed with the word "malignant" and feels that everyone dear to her (even her own body) is rejecting her. On top of this, someone has just broken into her apartment and, instead of robbing her, has left behind an ominous threatening message.
Change of scenery is badly needed.
So Rennie accepts a Caribbean assignment to the island of St. Antoine, and now comes the part of the story that could be summarized by saying "Shoulda stayed at home!"
This "tropical paradise" is really an economically depressed dump! And her small-town Ontario naivete is no match for the shifty characters she meets on this island. She is soon intricately involved in the political turmoil of St. Antoine, and her trip ends up being everything BUT the paradise and recuperation she was hoping for.
Illegal smuggling, bloodshed, betrayal, malnourishment, imprisonment... forget emotional improvement, physical survival becomes the issue!
It's as though Rennie goes to St. Antoine because of bodily harm from within, and finds that she must leave the island because of bodily harm from without. There's more to the story than this for sure, but this is an interesting aspect of it. The island did nothing to solve her problems, but it certainly made her see those problems for what they were... a part of her life, but not the whole.
Rating: 
Summary: What a dark and dismal horror story!
Review: I had to read this book for an English project and I was really looking forward to reading a book by Atwood because she has been aclaimed so many times. I was very disappointed in her choice of plot and I felt that she advanced her plot in leaps and bounds. The quality of writing was what I expected but there was so many different parts to the plot that it seemed as though it had been manufactured for popularity. This was a very unfortunate piece of writing as far as Atwood is concerned and I would advise readers to forget that she even wrote it.
Rating:
Summary: Not as enlightening as others by this author
Review: I have read many books by Atwood, so when I opened up Bodily Harm I anticipated her normal themes. But, much to my chagrin I came across a book that lacked any of Atwoods normalcy. The main character was a little to far- fetched for me. My recommedation is that if you are looking to read a good Atwood book keep on looking
Rating: 
Summary: Not impressed
Review: I love Atwood, and have been very impressed with her work in the past. Like some of the other reviewers, I anticipated a much better read, but was disappointed. If you can only read one, pass on this one.
Rating:
Summary: a little too grim even for me
Review: I'm a big Margaret Atwood fan and have read and reread her novels over the years. I think I had read this one previously actually but blocked it from my mind because it is such a depressing and horrific read. I hate Rennie: I want to identify with her because she is someone in a terrible situation (trying to deal with her recovery from the masectomy)who warrants sympathy for her mental anguish. But she is thoroughly unlikeable: she is a coward and that never changes. I kept thinking there was hope for her; she used to write, think, and talk about the "important" issues. Now she keeps insisting that she only does "lifestyles" or jewelry or whatever. I thought, OK, so all this awful ugliness on the island will be justified because she will regain her voice and write a real journalistic piece on the politic upheaval. She will become proactive. But in the end she is still totally inert, codependent, and frustratingly meek, naive, and detached.
Also, as a side note, this book makes the 80s seem very, very far away, like another time in history--which I guess they are now. But having grown up during the 70s and 80s, I feel generally attached to it. This 80s of darkness, despair, rape, murder, and hardcore, twisted pornography feels unfamiliar to me (and the latter does actually make even the oblivious Rennie vomit). Not to say these things didnt exist then, but why write about them without providing a commentary that explicitly denounces them in that Atwoodian way we know and love? The main character seems to be over the whole women's movement thing; she treats it like last year's hemline. And she doesn't mind when her boyfriend wants to very realistically pretend to rape her and gets off on that. She just does what he wants, whenever he wants it, without question, without any expression of her self and her desires. When she visits the porno exhibit in the police station where they collect things from raids, she and her friend laugh at the instruments there and Rennie seems oblivious to the fact that the culture surrounding the violent pieces (not all of them are, of course) in the exhibit is the culture that impacts her life (the rapist who visits her house and breaks in the window to wait for her who, BTW, could easily be her ex coming for her because he used to get off on this exact scenario [he would break in] as part of his rape-fantasy thing. She is unable to have sex with her boyfriend in this way after the operation b/c now that she is harmed, she feels vulnerable to these "fantasies", and the fear is all too real for play-acting).
I just don't get what this book is intended to add to the world of literature. Handmaid's Tale too is a dark tale but the protagonist is a subversive and you root for her the whole time. This character is detestable and the world is wholly detestable as well. The symbols seem odd and not really symbolic of anything; but you know that b/c they are oft-repeated, they are supposed to be symbolic of something. I'm sorry if this review doesnt have any cohesiveness but I feel that is also represenative of the book itself! I talked myself into giving it 3 stars instead of the 2 I originally intended; it's more obvious to me now that Atwood put a fair amount of effort into some of the constructs, I just still can't comes to terms with why she bothered to do so to tell this seemingly pointless tale.
Rating:
Summary: Hated It
Review: I've read most of Margaret Atwood's books. This, by far, is one of my favorites. This author has a way of pulling you into the stories and feeling the feelings of the characters. There is also a lot meaning behind her words.This was truly a fast read. I really liked the character, Rennie, although at one point in the book I was ready to clobber Paul for her. If you like Margaret Atwood, don't miss reading this one!
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: I've read most of Margaret Atwood's books. This, by far, is one of my favorites. This author has a way of pulling you into the stories and feeling the feelings of the characters. There is also a lot meaning behind her words. This was truly a fast read. I really liked the character, Rennie, although at one point in the book I was ready to clobber Paul for her. If you like Margaret Atwood, don't miss reading this one!
Rating:
Summary: Mean
Review: Ms. Atwood writes a mean sentence - stark, wild, and excellent. The story's not strong, but I continue to take pleasure in her prose, in her cutting expositions, and in the essential truths she so beautifully reveals.
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